


Keith's Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Growth Spurt

by heckalotta, vegitodorito



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 5+1 Things, ? - Freeform, Alien Biology, Alien Growth Spurts, Established Relationship, Fluff, Inappropriate Use of Shakespeare, M/M, Mentions of Sex, Rated T for swearing, Tooth Loss, alien puberty, nothing happens but, sappy boyfriends, shakespeare will get you laid but only sometimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 05:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15357576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heckalotta/pseuds/heckalotta, https://archiveofourown.org/users/vegitodorito/pseuds/vegitodorito
Summary: Growing pains come and go, but this shit is ridiculous. Keith blames the aliens.(Five scenarios in which Keith has to face his own biology, and 1 in which he faces his mother.)"Keith rubs his jaw for a moment, and runs his tongue over his teeth. “I lost a tooth,” he states simply.“You what?” Like an adrenaline rush, Shiro feels his parental instincts kick in. Keith runs his tongue around his teeth once more.“I lost two teeth,” he corrects."





	Keith's Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Growth Spurt

**Author's Note:**

> thanks (once again) to Tamara for being our beta!! LOVE U <3

1.

“Keith, do you think stars feel pain when they die?”

Keith snorts awake at the sound of Lance’s voice, pulled away from a deep, deep slumber. The two of them are in Keith’s bunk, Keith on his back, and Lance pressed up against his right side. They had dimmed the lights, despite it being the afternoon according to castleship’s clock.

“Huh?” Keith asks, eloquently.

“Do you think stars hurt when they die?” Lance asks again, this time impatiently. Keith gazes over, giving him a look.

“Lance, go to bed,” he responds.

“No Keith, seriously!” Lance leans up on his elbows, throwing himself over Keith’s torso. Keith winces at the action.

“Growing pains,” he hisses out between his teeth. Lance immediately moves off him again.

“Right, sorry babe. I forgot.” Lance laces his fingers between Keith’s fingers and holds their hands against Keith’s chest. They lay still for a few minutes longer, enough for Keith to relax again.

“You feeling any better? Do you want another massage?” Lance half-teased.

“Mhhm.”

“Is that a yes?”

Keith makes another mumbling noise.

“Do you want a massage or not?”

“Yes! Goddamn,” he huffs.

Lance snickers, but nonetheless indulges him. Lance sits up and Keith automatically rolls onto his stomach. Lance would make a quip about his eagerness, but he knows how sore Keith’s been as of late, so he refrains from commenting.

Lance hikes Keith’s shirt up and, sitting beside him, he runs his hands from Keith’s shoulders down to his waist.

“Hey babe?” Lance asks, pausing at the skin under Keith’s shoulder blades. He rubs little circles in said spot.

“Mm?” Keith says, already half asleep again.

“You’ve got marks or something here.” Keith’s head perks up at this, and he tries and fails to twist around and look at his own back to see what Lance is talking about. Lance refrains from laughing at him. “They look kinda… I think they’re stretch marks?”

“What’s so special about them, then?”

“Uh. They’re purple.”

“They’re _what?”_ Keith once again tries to peer over his shoulder, down his own back. This time, Lance laughs a little at him.

“It’s probably nothing. Probably just the lighting.”

“It _better_ be,” Keith mumbles, face smooshed into the mattress.

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

 

❈

 

One massage later, Lance is wandering down to the kitchen in search of lunch for himself and his very grumpy boyfriend. He’s passing by the common room when he stumbles across Hunk.

“Hey, buddy!” Hunk calls Lance over. “Whatcha up to?”

“Just making a run to the kitchen for lunch. What’re you up to?”

“Actually, I was looking for you.” Hunk grins. “Wanna help Pidge and I on our newest experiment? We’re running some coding in order toー”

“Nope, sorry mano, I gotta make Keith a sandwich.”

“Whー why can’t Keith make his own sandwich?” Hunk pouts.

“Well, I mean, I want one too. He’s been feeling sick lately, too,” Lance frowns.

“Space flu?” Hunk asks, sympathetically.

“Nah. It seems more like growing pains to me. Maybe his Galra genes are kicking in.”

“Is he… turning purple…?” Hunk says with a determinedly inquisitive look.

“No. Well, not yet, I don’t think? It’s pretty personal business.”

The scary scientist look dissipates from Hunk’s face, replaced with an empathetic wince. “Ah. I get it.”

“Yeah, so if you don’t mind…” Lance trails off, gesturing in the direction towards the kitchen, “sandwich time!” He waves as he goes, and Hunk returns the gesture.

A few moments later, Lance is making the best sandwiches he can out of all the alien ingredients Hunk has compiled from all their off-planet missions. The bread kinda melts in your mouth like cotton candy (despite having the texture of bread), and the meat Lance uses is green, but when he takes a bite everything tastes as it should, so Lance gives it a passing mark and heads back towards Keith’s room.

Keith is still awake when Lance returns, despite how clearly exhausted he is. Presumably, it’s the power of sheer desire for lunch keeping him awake. When Lance enters the room, Keith says something that sounds much closer to “sammich” than “sandwich”, and immediately grabs his lunch from Lance’s hands. Lance snickers, and blames the poor pronunciation on Keith’s general state of exhaustion.

They sit together on the bed to eat (Lance _knows_ he’ll regret getting crumbs on the bed later). Lance is having a good time, munching away, but Keith is eating with a scowl glued to his face.

“Are my sandwiches not good enough for you?” Lance asks, half joking, half concerned.

“No, it’s not that,” Keith says, bringing a hand up to his jaw. “My gums are really hurting.”

Lance frowns at this. He brushes a stray lock of hair behind Keith’s ear in a comforting gesture, one which Keith leans into eagerly. “Can’t catch a break, can you?”

 

2.

 

Maybe Keith should’ve mentioned that, along with his joints and gums, his eyes were sore to hell and back. Maybe Lance would’ve had the foresight to get pain meds from Coran before everyone turned in for the night. Maybe Keith wouldn't be lying here, next to his boyfriend, unable to sleep.

As it is, it feels like someone’s tugging and yanking at the back of Keith’s eyeballs, which is… definitely not any type of headache he’s had before, but he’s not willing to think any further about it. It’s just a weird headache. A weird space headache. Space does stuff like this to a man.

Despite all his joints collectively giving Keith the middle finger and telling him to give up on maintaining a physical form, he finds himself getting up to go down to the kitchen for a glass of water in the early “morning” hours, in the hopes it’ll relieve his day-long headache. In all honesty, he probably could’ve roused Lance and gotten _him_ to go get some water. He may have complained initially for being awoken so early, but Lance would undoubtedly haul himself out of bed to spare Keith the pain.

Keith wasn’t some wimp that needed to be babied, though. He could get a simple glass of water himself, damnit. Plus… Lance looked so comfortable in his night attire: eye mask, headphones, the whole shabam. Keith just couldn’t bring himself to wake him.

He managed to crawl over Lance without rousing him, although he might’ve kneed him in the side. He’s not sure. Anyways.

Keith hits the ground with a slight grunt, and regrets being born as his legs all but turn to goo the second any weight is put on them. Keith, however, being a trained soldier and fighter pilot, finds it in himself to continue his mission to the kitchen. Stumbling out into the hallway, it’s a bit tricky to see with the night-cycle lights on, as dim as they are. Keith stomps down the hall, refusing to drag his feet or limp. He is _going to get his drink_ and be back in bed _quickly_.

The walk there is uneventful, as one may suspect. No one’s up. He thinks that maybe he’ll see Hunk or Pidge grabbing a late-night snack (Hunk because the munchies wait for no man, and Pidge because it’s very Pidge-like to still be up at this hour). Possibly even Shiro, if he’s having difficulties sleeping, although, Shiro doesn’t tend to enjoy being in such a public place after one of his nightmares.

Keith found him here once, on his way to grabbing a quick bite to eat after some late-night training, trying to collect his thoughts. Shiro apologized for his presence, for no good reason, and hesitantly admitted to being up due to the aforementioned nightmares. Keith fixed him a meal as well, and stayed up, chatting with their weary leader to calm him back down. He’s not sure if anyone else knows Shiro has these nightmares. Keith had kept the event to himself.

He shakes his head clear as he enters the kitchen, and realizes that everything looks… brighter, much brighter, and oddly grayscale. Maybe the castle lights are on some weird setting? Puzzled, Keith reaches for the lightswitch (the Altean version of which is just a weird indented button in the wall), and presses it, only to immediately recoil and squint his eyes. He had just turned _on_ the lights, hadn’t he? Pushing the button again, they flickered out, and everything was left looking darker than earlier, for sure, but nowhere near the usual darkness of the castle’s night cycle.

“What the fuck?” he whispers, almost whimpers, in pure confusion. Keith stands there, stunned, before shaking his head and heading to cupboard with a determined resolve. Screw it. He’ll deal with it later. Right now, he just wants his damned cup of water.

 

3.

 

When Keith finds himself to be upset, there was only one thing to do to make himself feel better: exercise. Specifically, exercise in the form of hitting things. Unfortunately, this coping mechanism did him more harm than good when he was feeling physically impaired. For this session, had opted for sparing with Shiro as opposed to the training bots, as Shiro had human empathy, and knew better than to hit achy breaky Keith at full force.

“Are you sure you want to keep going?” Shiro asks.

“Yes,” Keith grits out. “Just for a little longer.”

“Okay, brace yourself then.”

Shiro lunges at Keith again. Despite Keith’s usually stellar reflexes, the punch Shiro throws connects with Keith’s jaw beautifully, and sends him stumbling across the room.

“Shiー shoot, sorry Keith, I thought you’d dodge it. Are you okay?” Keith’s hunches over, rubs his jaw, and spits out a mouthful of blood. A concerning _plink-plink_ accompanies the sound of saliva hitting the deck.

“Oh, fuck.” Shiro covers his mouth in shock.

Keith rubs his jaw for a moment, and runs his tongue over his teeth. “I lost a tooth,” he states simply.

“You _what_?” Like an adrenaline rush, Shiro feels his parental instincts kick in. Keith runs his tongue around his teeth once more.

“I lost two teeth,” he corrects.

“Oh, for the love of God.” At Keith’s nonchalant tone, parental panic is immediately replaced with exasperation. Keith opens his mouth, and Shiro walks over. He hums in agreement.

“Yep,” he says, “looks like you lost and an incisor and a molar. And there’sー” Shiro squints. “It looks like you have new teeth pushing through?”

Keith feels around the gaps in his mouth, and sure enough, he feels two sharp teeth growing in the place of his old ones.

“That’s not normal,” he comments after a moment.

“No,” Shiro agrees with a sigh, “it’s really not.”

 

❈

 

He’s been feeling better lately, not back to normal yet, but better. As of the moment he finds himself himself sitting at the kitchen island, fiddling with his knife as Hunk experimented cooking with alien food from a planet they visited recently. Lance hovered nearby, drawn in by the promise of space pseudo-brownies.

“For the third time Lance, I’m not going to blow up the kitchen again,” Hunk snips.

“That’s what you said last time, dude,” Lance pesters offhandedly, ironically fiddling with a temperature dial.

“It’s not my fault I can’t read Altean! If you’re so concerned about what I’m mixing, why don’t you learn it yourself?”

“Hey man, I’m the best at Altean on this whole ship!” Lance puffs out his chest proudly. “Well, besides Allura and Coran.”

Hunk rolls his eyes. “Then read.”

“I don’t wanna,” he whines like a child. Hunk ignores him now to put his deep purple concoction into the oven. The alien brownies take no time at all to start rising, filling the kitchen with the pungent aroma of baking brownies. Lance honest to God sighs at the nostalgic smell, making Hunk look immensely smug. Keith, on the other hand, feels like he’s going to hurl.

“Keith, are you doing alright over there?” Hunk asks, pulling Keith out of his headache trance.

“Yeah, sorry, I’m good. The brownies just smell bad.”

Lance looks over, clear shock written all over his face, and Hunk looks at Keith like he’s just taken his firstborn child and slam dunked it onto the ground.

“What are you talking about?” Hunk asks, sounding very upset with Keith.

“Sorry, it’s just a really strong smell. I have a headache.”

“Doesn’t smell that much to me,” Lance interjects, eyebrows furrowed. The three stand around in silence, a situation only comparable to an epic western showdown.

“Hey guys.” Pidge walks in, oblivious to scenario unfolding around her. “What smells like steak?”

“ _Steak?”_ Hunk exclaims. “I’m making _brownies!”_

Keith screws his face up in discomfort, headache pounding in his ears, not helped by Pidge and Hunk’s screeching. Lance, noticing Keith’s discomfort, and wanting to avoid the shit show about to commence, briskly walks out of the room without comment, Keith in tow.

“You good, babe?”

“No,” he mumbles, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Everything is justー everything is just a lot right now. The lights are too bright and it smells like a damn perfume store in there andー”

“What, are you hungover?”

“No, Lance.” He sighs. “I’m not fucking hungover. I don’t know, maybe I just need some sleep.”

“You’ve been sleeping a lot this week man. Maybe you’re sick or something…” Lance sounds concerned.

“I don’t feel sick… I feel…” He sighs again. “I feel like I’m fourteen with all these growing pains happening.”

Lance brings a hand to his chin, pondering. “Maybe this is something we should ask Krolia about?”

Problem is, going to Krolia and asking her about… whatever the fuck is going on means acknowledging there’s an issue, some sort of weird, genetic issue that only his mom can answer, and there is 100% not an issue. At least not one like that. Everything is fine. It’s just some weird space shit that will sort itself out on it’s own.

“No, it’s fine,” Keith’s quick to say. “I’m fine.” Lance, looks over at Keith, who is quite literally massaging his own temples in response to the splitting headache wracking his brain.

“Mmhmm,” Lance comments cautiously, cleary not buying a word of it. “Come on, let’s get you back to your room then.”

“Yeah. Wait, hold on.”  Keith sticks a finger and his thumb in his mouth. He twists and pulls sharply, and without even a wince of reaction Keith holds yet another tooth in front of his face. “That makes eleven.”

“Jesus Christ.”

 

5.

 

The whole ordeal reaches a breaking point about three days later. Alarms are going off for morning training, and Keith just can’t move an inch from bed. His joints are aching, his head is aching, his gums are aching, and the second the lights come on, he violently pulls the blankets over his head like some kind of angry vampire. Lance, in the midst of running around and putting his armour on, is making lots of concerned comments.

“Babe, you gottaー” he fumbles while getting a boot on, almost falling overー “talk to Krolia about this, or at least Coran! Please?”

“M’fine,” Keith says, clearly not fine. Lance, now fully armoured and standing in the doorway, lets out an exasperated groan.

“Fine, die then.”

Keith flips him off as he heads out the door.

 

❈

 

Exactly one training session and hot shower later, Lance is dragged back into Keith’s newfound nest of blankets, quite literally. While being yanked under, Lance notes the iron grip Keith has on him is accompanied by the sharp pin pricks of, _what_ , claws?

It’s hot under the covers, but Keith doesn’t seem to mind. Immediately, he curls up to Lance’s side and buries his head in the crook of Lance’s neck.

“Hey, you feeling any better?” Lance asks.

“No,” Keith whines.

“You wanna go back to sleep?”

Keith starts mouthing at Lance’s neck. “No.”

Lance tries to ignore the feeling of Keith’s now roaming hands, in favour of concern for his boyfriend, but it gets harder when one of Keith’s –now sharply clawed– hands reach for the elastic of his pajama pants.

“Dude. You were complaining about your joints like five minutes ago, wh- _ah_ \- what are you trying to do?”

“You can’t guess?” Keith rasps.

“Well I can guess what, but I can’t imagine _why_ ,” Lance huffs in response.

“I’m horny, Lance.”

“You’re always horny, Romeo.”

“Who’s Romeo?”

“Exactly how long did you attend the Garrison for, dum-dum? Does _Shakespeare_ ring a bell?” Lance turns over to face Keith, sighing.

“Oh, like Romeo and Juliet.”

“Ding ding ding!”

“Yeah, I didn’t waste my time with that heterosexual garbage.”

“It’s a beautiful tragedy, how dare you? How _dare_ you? Now you’re really not getting any.”

“Wait, babe no, please, uh… _to be or not to be…_?” he tries.

“You’re hurting Keith, we’re not do anything.”

Keith groans.

“Uh…” He closes his eyes, _“but soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief, that thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.”_

His recital shocks Lance. “How the _fuck_ do you know that?”

Keith shrugs, “I memorized it to get laid once.” He looks coyly over at Lance. “Maybe it’ll work twice…?”

“No.”

Keith pouts, and his aches and pains start coming back to him. Lance wraps an arm around Keith and rubs at his back.

“Babe…” Lance says, much more soft than he has any right to, “let’s wait ‘till you’re out of this funk, okay?”

Keith huffs. “Fine.” He rolls out of bed onto shaky knees. “I’ll go talk to Krolia.”

“Wow, that’s all it took?”

Keith’s knees give out and he falls backwards onto the bed. Staring over at Lance from his pathetic heap, he accepts that he’s lost. “Can you please go talk to her for me?” he asks defeatedly.

 

+1.

 

“So, I have a question.”

Lance, of course being the sucker he is, took the mission to inquire about Keith’s poor health upon himself to save his boyfriend the trouble. To be honest, he’s a little… scared, of Krolia. She’s almost scarily similar to Keith, and her icy demeanor and general Galra size can be a little intimidating. Sue him!

He wasn’t exactly sure where to start looking for her initially, and wound up heading down to the kitchen on a whim. Oddly enough, that’s where he finds her, poking around some green food goo apathetically with a spork, frown upon her face. Offhandedly, Lance had wondered how much of a difference there is between the food goo they serve on Galra ships and the goo the castle serves.

Krolia raises an eyebrow. “What kind of question?”

“A hypothetical one…?” Lance tries.

“Okay, shoot.”

Lance thinks carefully about his next words. “Let’s say, hypothetically, that I have this friend, who is, hypothetically, half Galra.”

Krolia nods along, unphased by his weirdness. “Yeah?”

“So this person, hypothetically, has been getting these crazy growing pains, sore joints, bad headaches, yadda yadda. He’s lost, like, thirteen of his adult teeth ーwhich humans are _not_ supposed to lose, by the way, but they all grew back, like, the night after and super sharp! He’s got these weird claws now, too. Nothing he does is fixing any of it!” Lance suddenly remembers who he’s talking to. “This, erー this whole situation is hypothetical, of course.”

“Of course,” she plays along.

“So, would you know anything about that hypothetical situation?”

“He’s being dramatic isn’t he?” She sighs. “Alright, take me to him.”

 

❈

 

They arrive at Keith’s bedroom door moments later, Lance knocks.

“Keith buddy? It’s me, I brought your mom, can we come in?”

A groan answers from within. Lance waves for the door to open and steps aside to let Krolia in first.

“Hey Krolia,” Keith says weakly from bed.

Krolia scoffs. “Oh, get up.”

Lance is flabbergasted at her lack of empathy. His own mother would be much more concerned in this sort of situation! What’s even more shocking is that Keith actually moves to stand. Once he’s upright Lance notices how much _taller_ he looks, _or is it just the light?_ Keith’s only up for a few moments, however, before he collapses forward. They both move to catch him, but Krolia beats Lance to it.

“Oh, you weren't kidding,” she says, sounding more motherly than before. “I didn’t find puberty this bad, but I suppose you are only half-Galra. Your human side leaves a lot to be desired.”

“Ouch,” Lance says flatly, and is promptly ignored.

“So, your Galra genetics are kicking in,” she explains simply. “What hurts?”

“Everything,” Keith mumbles. Krolia fixes him a look, and he elaborates further. “My head, my eyes, my joints, my muscles, my skin. My whole body hurts, Krolia,” he deadpans.

“Okay, well, most of it is just growing pains. They’ll ease with time.”

“How much time?” Keith begs.

“Not much longer,” she offers. “Probably.”

“As for your headaches, and your eyes, I’m not certain. Perhaps you’re growing some sort of tapetum lucidum.”

“‘Cause we all know what that means,” Keith sasses.

“They’re the reflective part in, say, a cat’s eyes.” Krolia rolls her eyes. “Do your headaches have any sort of source, or?”

“Smells. Smells for sure.”

“Ah.” Krolia nods. “Yeah, humans have a pretty weak sense of smell. Your father’s nose was useless.”

“Ohー hold that thought.” Keith reaches in his mouth, and yet again, pulls out another tooth.

“Teeth loss is normal too,” she adds. “You’ll get a new set every five deca-phoebs.”

“ _Every five years?”_ Lance squawks.

“Like a shark,” Keith says, sounding a little dazed.

“Yes. If I recall, humans only get two sets of teeth, correct?” Krolia asks. Lance nods in response. “Anyways. There’s nothing you can really do to prevent all this. I’d suggest to take some painkillers and ride it out.”

“Mhm, okay,” Keith says, climbing back into bed in defeat. “Thanks, Krolia.”

“Feel better soon,” she says, and ruffles Keith’s hair. It’s the most extreme affectionate contact Lance has seen Krolia give Keith so far. With that, she turns and leaves the room.

“So…” Lance says awkwardly, unmoving from where he was standing earlier. “That was interesting.”

“Yeah, sure was,” Keith grunts. Lance picks up on the underlying “ _This fucking sucks.”_ He walks over to the side of the bed, and smooths a hand across Keith’s hair, pushing back his bangs.

“Do you want me to go get you some pain meds?” Lance asks. Keith grunts again, and closes his eyes in response to Lance’s touch.

“Later,” he says. “Cuddles now?”

Lance chuckles quietly. “Okay, you big baby.” He lifts up the covers and crawls in next to Keith. They’re both quiet for a long time as Lance rubs circles into Keith’s back. Just as Lance thinks Keith’s asleep, he hears something soft and unfamiliar, almost akin to a snore, but Keith usually isn’t one to snore.

Is he… _purring_?

**Author's Note:**

> supervegitos is the one being horny on main blame them not me
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> supervegitos' [tumblr](http://supervegitos.tumblr.com)
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> heckalotta's [tumblr](http://coranforblackpaladin.tumblr.com)


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